Abigail "Nabby" Amelia Adams Smith (July 14, 1765 – August 15, 1813) was the daughter of
Abigail
Abigail () was an Israelite woman in the Hebrew Bible married to Nabal; she married the future King David after Nabal's death ( 1 Samuel ). Abigail was David's second wife, after Saul and Ahinoam's daughter, Michal, whom Saul later married ...
and
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
,
founding father
The following list of national founding figures is a record, by country, of people who were credited with establishing a state. National founders are typically those who played an influential role in setting up the systems of governance, (i.e. ...
and second
President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
, and the sister of
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States S ...
, sixth President of the United States. She was named for her mother.
Romance and marriage
At the age of 18, Adams met and fell in love with
Royall Tyler
Royall Tyler (June 18, 1757 – August 26, 1826) was an American jurist and playwright. He was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard University in 1776, and then served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolution. He was ad ...
. Her father thought she was too young to be
courted, but he eventually accepted it. At one point the two were even engaged to be married. But John Adams, then the U.S. minister to the
Kingdom of Great Britain
The Kingdom of Great Britain (officially Great Britain) was a Sovereign state, sovereign country in Western Europe from 1 May 1707 to the end of 31 December 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of ...
, eagerly called for his wife and daughter to join him in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. For a time, Adams maintained a long-distance relationship with Tyler, but eventually broke off the engagement, leaving Tyler depressed.
![William Stephens Smith](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/William_Stephens_Smith.jpg)
Shortly afterward Adams met Colonel
William Stephens Smith
William Stephens Smith (November 8, 1755 – June 10, 1816) was a United States representative from New York. He married Abigail "Nabby" Adams, the daughter of President John Adams, and so was a brother-in-law of President John Quincy A ...
, who was serving as her father's secretary and was 10 years her senior. They would later be related by marriage—Col. Smith's sister was the wife of Adams's brother
Charles
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...
. They were married at the American minister's residence in London on June 12, 1786.
Nagel, Paul C.
Paul Chester Nagel (August 14, 1926 – May 22, 2011) was a historian and biographer who was best known for his works for general readers on the Adams and Lee political families, and who also wrote on the history of his home state of Missouri. ...
1987. ''The Adams women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, their sisters and daughters''. New York: Oxford University Press. Adams's observations of European life and customs, and of many of the distinguished statesmen of the day, were later published.
[Smith, Abigail Adams 1841. ''Journal and correspondence of Miss Adams, daughter of John Adams, second president of the United States, written in France and England, in 1785.']
book
/ref>
Their courtship was thought to be too short by Adams's parents, and historians have not considered it to be a good marriage. While Colonel Smith was kind to his family, he never settled, continually seeking a better lot in life. He spent more money than he earned and lost everything to real estate speculation in the early 1800s. This left them on a small farm along the Chenango River
The Chenango River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed August 8, 2011 tributary of the Susquehanna River in central New York in the United States. It drains a dissec ...
in central New York.
Their children were:
Diagnosis of breast cancer
In 1810, Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...
. On October 8, 1811, a mastectomy
Mastectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of one or both breasts, partially or completely. A mastectomy is usually carried out to treat breast cancer. In some cases, women believed to be at high risk of breast cancer have the operat ...
was performed by John Warren John Warren may refer to:
Medicine
* John Warren (surgeon) (1753–1815), American surgeon during the Revolutionary War
* John Collins Warren (1778–1856), American surgeon
* John Collins Warren Jr. (1842–1927), American surgeon, son of John C ...
and several assistants without any anesthesia
Anesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical or veterinary purposes. It may include some or all of analgesia (relief from or prevention of pain), paralysis (muscle relaxation), ...
in an upstairs room of the Adams home. Her mother, husband, and daughter Caroline were also on hand to assist.
The surgery
The exact details of the surgery are not known but it was described as a typical 19th-century operation. The instruments used during the surgery consisted of a large fork with a pair of six-inch prongs sharpened to a needle point, a wooden-handled razor, a small oven filled with heated coals, and a thick iron spatula. Before the surgery began Dr. Warren strapped Smith into a chair to restrain her, and then began to remove the clothing to expose the area on which he would operate. Once the diseased breast was exposed, other physicians held her left arm back so that Warren would have better access to the diseased tissue. He began the surgery by thrusting the large fork into her breast and lifting it from the chest wall. He then sliced at the base of the breast until it was completely severed from her chest. After removing the breast, he saw that the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes under Smith's arms, and he worked to remove those tumors as well. To stop Smith's bleeding, Warren applied the heated spatula to cauterize the open cuts, and then sutured the wounds. The surgery took around 25 minutes, and dressing the wounds took more than an hour. Warren and his assistants later expressed astonishment that Smith endured the pain of the surgery and cauterization without crying out, despite the gruesomeness of the operation, which was so horrifying it caused her mother, husband, and daughter to turn away.
Death
In 1812, Smith finally started to feel well and returned to the family farm in New York. In early 1813, she began feeling pain in her abdomen and spine, as well as suffering from painful headaches. At first a local doctor in New York said that the pain was from rheumatism, but later that year new tumors began to appear in the scar tissue as well as on her skin. She then returned to Quincy, telling her husband that she preferred to die at her parents' home. She died in August 1813 at the age of 48. She was buried at Hancock Cemetery
Hancock Cemetery is a historic cemetery on the Hancock Adams Common, across from the United First Parish Church, in Quincy, Massachusetts, United States. It is named after Reverend John Hancock (1702–1744), father of Founding Father John Hanco ...
in Quincy.
Depictions in popular culture
Smith's death is a poignant part of the 2008 ''John Adams'' miniseries, in which she is played by Sarah Polley
Sarah Ellen Polley (born January 8, 1979) is a Canadian actress,Howell, Peter (September 24, 1999)"Nobody's Starlet: Toronto's Sarah Polley is Only 20 but already a veteran actor so secure in her craft she can thumb her nose at Hollywood" ''Tor ...
; Smith as a young girl was played by Madeline Taylor in the first three episodes of the same series. The series took artistic license
Artistic license (alongside more contextually-specific derivative terms such as poetic license, historical license, dramatic license, and narrative license) refers to deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes. It can include the alterat ...
by shifting Smith's cancer diagnosis to 1803, and changing many other aspects of her life.
Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden
The Abigail Adams Smith Museum, now known as the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum
The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, formerly the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, is an historic antebellum residential building at 421 East 61st Street, near the East River, in New York City. It is generally open to the public as a museum, thoug ...
and Garden, was a carriage house built in 1799 by a wealthy New York china merchant on property purchased from Smith and her husband. The carriage house was purchased by Joseph Hart and converted into a day hotel. Day hotels were popular at the time as they provided the burgeoning New York middle class an escape from the overcrowded and oppressive city. It was called the Mount Vernon Hotel after George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
's home in Virginia and functioned in this capacity from 1826 to 1833. The property changed hands again when it was purchased by Jeremiah Towle. It served as the Towle family's private residence until 1905 when, with the spread of industrialization, it was purchased by Standard Gas Light Company
Standard Gas Light Company was a New York City public utility which had its primary office at 173 Broadway (Manhattan), in 1890. The
business maintained two branch offices at the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue (Manhattan) and 42nd Street (Man ...
. The building was preserved until its ultimate purchase by the Colonial Dames of America in 1924. In 1939, the building was opened to the public as the Abigail Adams Smith Museum. The Colonial Dames of America reinterpreted the house as a day hotel and reopened it as the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden in 2000. It remains open to the public with museum tours daily (except Monday).
Family tree
Notes
References
External links
Nagel, Paul. ''The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Adams family biographies – Massachusetts Historical Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Abigail Adams
1765 births
1813 deaths
Colonial American women
Deaths from breast cancer
Children of presidents of the United States
Children of vice presidents of the United States
Adams political family
Quincy family
People from Quincy, Massachusetts
Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts
Burials in Massachusetts
People of colonial Massachusetts
18th-century American women
19th-century American women
Children of John Adams